On laundry and language- Dave's words.

David’s Thoughts

Today it officially begins. The last 5 days Steph and we have been busy touring Taipei. We have been to the Zoo, The Gondola Ride, Taipei 101, Shilin Night Market and have seen a lot of many different parks and cities all over Taiwan. I have meet some really cool people from all over the world, So far I have met someone from, Alaska, Nebraska, Florida, Detroit, Texas, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England, Belize, Jamaica, Guelph ON, and Vancouver Canada. Well I have decided that today is going to be Laundry day. It’s Raining a little bit and I am shocked to admit it, but I am actually cold and wearing my thick sweater. Today it’s around 22 degrees which back in Canada is considered to be a nice summer day, but here with the rain it is like a cold fall day. It is Winter here and all the locals are wearing pants, sweaters and scarves, but I am still wearing shorts and sandals ( I heard North Ontario got 3 inches of snow ). Steph is off to her first day of training and so I made off on an adventure to find a Laundromat. On the way to the Laundromat I stopped by one of the street vendors and bought myself Chinese pancake for breakfast. Um Amazing ! this is so cool and different and is made with eggs and green onion. The dough is not like a pancake even though that’s what is it called it’s more like a flat tortilla or a thick crepe but even then this still doesn’t do justice to the shape or texture. I can see a potential dish with smoked trout and dill cream fresh on top maybe with a few capers and sliced red onion. The Laundromat was really cool, modern and up to date. I am so lost when it comes to understanding Chinese. I almost put money in the wrong machine and a little Chinese lady started waving her hands and pointing to me that it was the dryer not the wash. This is hard to picture for you I know but to pay for the use of the machine the slots are all in a row not attached to each machine individually. Coin wash in Taiwan is not that expensive, but not that cheap either back in North Bay we could wash 3 loads of laundry and it would cost anywhere from 8 to 12 dollars depending if we wanted it dried or not. The coin wash costs 10NT for a small package of soap and then for the wash cycle it costs 10NT for 6 minute increments and 10NT for 8 minute drying cycle. The whole cost was around 150 NT or 5.40 Cdn for 3 large loads of laundry I think this is very fair.  Laundry only took around an hour and a half to finish and so I returned back to the hotel to drop off the clean clothes. On the way up I asked the front desk to help me with a few mandarin words and translation and they were very helpful. So today I learned a few different words in mandarin. The first word I learned was “Nai Cha” which translates in English as Milk Tea (Bubble tea) “Cong yo bing jia dan” which means egg and scallion pancake and the word “Xian Xia Sheui Jiao” which translates Shrimp Dumplings or “Zhu ro Shaei Jiao” which means Pork Dumplings. Very simple words but still effective when trying to find something to eat and helping the street vendor know that you want milk tea and not green tea or you want pork not pork blood a very common item served in noodles. The word I learned the other day was “Pi Chi” which is Taiwan slang for “get out of my way” or “move over” and it works and the locals here are like blown away when me a giant white dude says it above their head.